Recently on Yahoo there have been advertisements for getting more about your favorite music artist. The slogan is “Surround yourself with _____” You fill in the blank. And there is a picture of some girl happily smiling as her favorite artist swirls around her head.
And it struck me as another reminder of something God has been teaching me.
My junior year of high school was a pivotal year for me spiritually. I’d just come from the prior year where I’d felt that I had been rejected by the church and therefore God, and decided to be agnostic. I could not deny that God existed but I didn’t think He cared. Spring of my junior year I was miraculously blessed on a mission trip and felt God touch me and call me His own. Following that mission trip different things in my life began to change. These were not quick or easy changes, many of them I struggled with over months with tears and anger. God sent others to be messengers to help me in my growth, but I wasn’t always appreciative—just ask my brother. But God continued to work on my heart and I decided to listen to only Christian music, change my dress to be more modest and considerate of those around me, be careful what movies I watched and I decided to save my last first kiss until marriage. Each of these changes came about in a slightly different way and some of them were easier to tell others about. Not everyone understood my decisions or supported them. I had friends that ridiculed me for things I was doing but by God’s grace I made them. I was in love with Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and would do anything He asked me, even if it took some struggling with self to do it.
Since that time I’ve kept the decisions I’ve made since then. Of course they have altered and changed with sometime but the principles remained the same. Or so I thought.
Coming to Korea in August 2008 was an adventure in many ways but it was also like going to jail for me.
I couldn’t speak the language, I couldn’t get away from the city, and no matter where I went I was starred at and pointed at and talked about. This has cured any desire to be famous I ever might have had. I cannot wait to be “normal” again. I felt trapped here and missed my family so much that even thinking in my head, “I’m here in Korea for ten months” almost physically hurt. I realize that many missionaries have it much harder than I have it but that didn’t comfort me. I wanted to read books but it was difficult and expensive to find English books. Besides, after teaching all day I wanted something to “veg-out” with. And so movies seemed the perfect thing.
When watching a movie, I can escape. And not only can I escape into the world of the actors and actresses but I can pretend that I’m home. That I’m only a drive away from friends and family. It’s amazing how easy it is to say, “Let’s watch part of a movie while we eat” or “We can watch just 30 minutes now” and how each day a large part can be spent in front of a screen.
However, while this was a nice escape-ism I also was feeling convicted that I was watching too many movies. Now I want you to understand that I am really careful with what I watch. I use http://www.kidsinmind.com/ to check out ratings and stuff, plus I’m afraid of most movies so that helps. =P But whenever I was reading my devotions and I read anything about living totally for Christ, I would pray, “Please Lord, whatever I need to give up to be totally yours, help me.” And then I’d know, even as I was praying, that the answer was movies. I felt like God was ripping my life support from me. I thought, “I’m here in Korea. Isn’t that enough that I spend time teaching and giving Bible studies? Can’t I just enjoy a movie or two a week?” But the Holy Spirit is persistent. So finally I talked to Matthew and said that I needed to limit the amount of movies I watched. So we decided that once a week we’d watch a movie. At first I felt relieved. Phew. I’d done the right thing. I had a clear conscious again.
I was wrong. Again, I’d be reading in my Bible something that prompted me to pray, “Please Lord make my life completely Yours.” Boom. I’d feel the conviction. Movies. I felt frustrated and angry and unable to give them up. I struggled and just felt so unable. I talked to Matthew again, and I praise God for such an amazing husband, and so now it was every other week. As I type this it comes to me that you might think that this was over a short period of time. I assure you that it was not. The time between watching lots of movies and then going to once-a-week-movies was a long, long time. And then it was another lengthy period of time until we watched a movie once every other week. This time I felt better, like maybe this was the step I was supposed to take.
But I still struggled inside my heart. I knew somehow that I wasn’t willing to really give up movies. I kept telling myself, when I go home, then I can do it. Then I’ll have friends and family to be with and do things with and I won’t need movies anymore.
Steps to Christ says on page40, talking about confessing of sins, "To every acknowledgment of his guilt he adds an apology in excuse of his course, declaring that if it had not been for certain circumstances, he would not have done this or that, for which he is reproved." That was me. I was making excuses for the decisions I was making.
Yet, even when I made these excuses when I looked at my life, I was the church of Ephesus in Revelation of which Christ says, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” It wasn’t just the fact that I couldn’t give up movies. It was so much more. There was a core issue: I couldn’t find that first passion I had when I came to God. I would weep in my devotion feeling the failure of my Christian walk, the hypocrisy in which I taught my students. Who was I to call them to a relationship of surrender to God when I had lost my first love?
1 comment:
This is really good stuff Beth-Anne! Thank you for sharing.
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